THE HARD TRUTH ABOUT MIKE HARKINS

By Celia Cohen
Grapevine Political Writer

Even the judge seemed to get the sniffles when he
handed down the sentence to send Michael E. Harkins
away.

The courtroom felt like a funeral home, a bit too
strained, a bit too formal, people holding back tears as
much as they could as the prosecutor and the defense
attorney laid out Harkins' life like the rough draft of
an obituary.

It got to people. There was a reason for it. They
knew why they were there. For a long time now, the
reason was an elephant in the room, a hard truth to be
tiptoed around.

Harkins had blown it.

He told the court he had entered public life as
something worthy of George Washington, but those days
had faded away. He was leaving it like George Washington
Plunkitt, the Tammany Hall political machine's sage, who
said, "When a man works in politics, he should get
something out of it."

This ending never had to be, even though it was more
disappointing than it was surprising. What everybody
knew about Harkins was he never could get enough of a
good thing.

The Delaware River & Bay Authority had been a very
good thing. It was the Shangri-La of politics at the
point Harkins was hired as the executive director in
1992, although his 10 years there forced a change.

Half Delaware and half New Jersey, the authority fell
through the cracks of both, so it had little
supervision, fun landmarks to run in the Delaware
Memorial Bridge and the Cape May-Lewes Ferry, money to
burn and wonderful perks like travel, travel, travel.

Everybody knew it was a playground for the political
insiders who had the connections to get there, and it
was where Harkins went, the reward he gave himself after
he served as the secretary of state, another of
politics' choicest posts, under Gov. Michael N. Castle,
now Delaware's lone congressman.

There is a saying in politics, It is all right to
be a pig, you just can't be a hog. Even at a known
trough like the authority, where everybody had winked at
the excesses for years, Harkins wanted more.

Federal officials estimated he ran up about $90,000
in personal expenses, most of it by commandeering
flights aboard an authority-leased plane, a show-off
entertaining himself and others at premier basketball
games, prestigious golf courses and even a college
reunion.

Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. For his
high-flying joy rides, Harkins obscured what he was.

Now 63, Harkins burst into Republican politics as a
boy wonder in his 20s, working on the campaigns of U.S.
Sen. William V. Roth Jr. and others, and then to prove
how good he was, he got himself elected to a single term
as a state representative in 1970.

Harkins was a master strategist and deal-maker who
thrived in crisis like a one-man cavalry coming over the
hill and could not wait to be the center of attention
during the celebration afterwards. He was the fun-loving
Falstaff of Delaware politics.

Harkins worked for Mayor Harry G. "Hal" Haskell Jr.
in the city, County Executive Richard T. Collins in New
Castle County, Gov. Pierre S. du Pont and Castle in the
state, U.S. Sen. William S. Cohen of Maine in the
Congress, and who knows how much advice he slipped
across the aisle to U.S. Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., a
Democrat who was an old friend.

Through better and worse, through Harkins' strengths
and his faults, Delaware's political circles stuck with
him when he went up and when he came down. They knew the
way he was. They had ridden him, and they had not reined
him in.

On Election Day 2004, he still was invited to
Republican headquarters to help get out the vote. On the
eve of St. Patrick's Day, at a dinner for the charity
called the St. Patrick's Day Society that Harkins helped
to found, Biden came boiling in, still in the tuxedo he
wore to a Washington event that had detained him, and
called out to Harkins from the center of the room.

Harkins' very public doomsday came Friday in U.S.
District Judge Kent A. Jordan's courtroom in Wilmington.
A row of reporters was there, along with family and
friends and some dignitaries representing the station
from which Harkins had fallen -- Glenn C. Kenton and
Michael Ratchford, the secretaries of state who
bracketed him, Kenton under du Pont and Ratchford under
Castle.

Amid the remorse and reproach, there was also relief.
It could have gone a lot worse. Jordan, who is not known
as a judicial pushover, gave Harkins the low end of a
penalty based on the advisory sentencing guidelines.

"You defrauded the public," Jordan said. "I will send
you to prison."

Although the jail time could have been as long as a
year and a half, Jordan sentenced Harkins to a year and
two months, while noting the last two months could be
shaved for a model prisoner. He probably will be given a
date to report to prison in about a month.

Harkins also must pay a $15,000 fine as well as about
$50,000 he still owes the authority in restitution, and
he has to perform 1,000 hours of community service.

"Every criminal sentencing is a tragic event. This is
only a more publicly-noticed tragic event. Lives are
damaged, hearts are broken, and penalties are lined up
to to be paid," Jordan said.

"You're an uncommonly accomplished man, but you now
share with common criminals the distinction of having
violated the norms of our society."

The courtroom was so raw with emotion that it even
affected the professionals. Victor F. Battaglia, the
defense attorney, is a past president of the Delaware
State Bar Association and a lawyer's lawyer, but even
his voice broke as he spoke on Harkins' behalf.

Battaglia called Harkins' crimes the result of
"slovenly bookkeeping" by a big-picture guy who did not
sweat the small stuff. "The lesson from Mike Harkins is,
do sweat the small things, they can be fatal," Battaglia
said.

Harkins read a statement, saying he otherwise could
not get through what he wanted to say. He acknowledged
that his woes were self-inflicted but hurt many others
beyond himself.

"I had succumbed to my own belief that somehow black
and white and gray didn't apply to me," Harkins said.
"Today I know that justice demands I suffer punishment
for those actions."

Richard G. Andrews, the federal prosecutor, was
unsparing in his assessment of Harkins, saying this case
was all about "greed, arrogance and power."

It was also about delusions of grandeur. What Harkins
stole was a lifestyle beyond his means, and his cheating
made it fun for so many people for so many years. He was
Enron with so much going for it that a president was its
pal. He was a baseball player on steroids with the crowd
cheering his mammoth home runs.

He was a man of his times. He did not know when to
stop. Between sniffles, Jordan told Harkins it was up to
him to make another start.

"I sincerely wish you and your family well. I hope to
meet you on a happier occasion," Jordan said. "We're a
culture that loves comebacks. I hope this sentence is
part of your comeback."